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Every fall, the Farther Foundation—a nonprofit devoted to providing global travel opportunities for students from families and communities that have faced chronic disinvestment and sustained inequity—hosts a Story Slam at the historic FitzGerald’s Night Club in Berwyn. I was honored to be invited to take the stage in 2023 but—as you’re about to learn—couldn’t make it.
The foundation nevertheless invited me back the next year. And—given its belief in the life-changing power of travel—well, I couldn’t resist sharing the story of how one particular seemingly ill-fated trip changed my life absolutely for the better. Here’s how it sounded, Oct. 10, 2024.
If you enjoy this story—or even if you don’t—consider making a tax-deductible contribution at fartherfoundation.org/donate.
If you’re not in a place where you can listen, here’s a transcript.
[Cheering and applause.] I am unworthy of those woos, but thank you very much.
You know, one of the Farther Foundation’s overarching themes is learning from travel experiences. Interesting fact: I prepared what you’re about to hear in 2023, when it turns out I was not allowed any travel experiences—because I came down with COVID just before last year’s big Farther Foundation fundraiser.
For you, the good news is that I’ve had a year to practice this. (Not that I have.)
So …
Driving a car is a kind of travel, right?
I have to confess: I’m not a great driver. I’m a lot better than I used to be, but I’m probably still not great. Let me give you an example that’s become a running joke in my family:
I’m driving to the airport, more often than not to drop off or pick up a relative approaching the airport. The signs say Arrivals and Departures. So. I’m arriving at the airport to drop off a son who is departing for another city. Which way do I go?
Or: I’m arriving at the airport to pick up someone, and then we’ll depart from my home in Oak Park. Which way do I go?
More than once, I confess, I have made the wrong choice over the years. I’ve mostly managed to keep this cognitive dissonance at bay by focusing on the icons: Airplane pointed up? Someone leaving Chicago. Airplane pointed down? Someone coming home with me.
But I’m still easy to fool.
My son, Joel, not long ago—as I wrote this last year—screwed around with me as I took him to a flight out of town. “We’re arriving at the airport,” he said helpfully, “so go to arrivals.” And he said it with such straight-faced authority—I’ve come to trust my sons on driving counsel—that I started to head down until he laughed nervously, just before I made the wrong turn: “No, no, no. I’m departing. Go up! Go up!”
In the fullness of time, the reasons for my motorist shortcomings may become clearer. But—right now, at this point in my life—I have a few theories:
Maybe because my mom died when I was 14 and my dad, his hands full with me and my two younger sisters, kinda left me to figure out the whole driving thing on my own with some help from my friends.
Or maybe it’s because as a high school kid in band, I recognized that I had to sacrifice one of my academic elective slots to band rehearsals. So, after my freshman year, I exploited a loophole in the rules to push to the shorter six-week summer sessions the classes I didn’t really care about. You know, P.E, health and, uh, yeah, driver education.
So I didn’t really get that much driver education. And then I flunked my driver’s license test—twice. For, you know, little things like turning right when the examiner said to turn left. I passed on the third try only because the examiner took pity on me: “Ya failed twice? Ah, man. No one should fail twice. Ge’ me back alive and I’ll give ya yer license.”
So, besides all that, I was an early embracer of the environmental movement, and I didn’t buy into the whole car culture thing. I liked bicycling a lot better.
In the summer of 1976, I biked 120 miles back to our home in Orland Park from the University of Illinois, where I had worked at the student radio station, WPGU—where a friend fatefully there would later recommend me for my first job out of college, as news director at an AM/FM combination in Aurora.
And so it was that in July 1978, I was driving back home to Orland Park from Aurora in my Volkswagen Rabbit—with a manual transmission, because back then they were more fuel efficient, if a little more attention intensive. I’d worked a long day—got in around 5 in the morning and I was leaving that day around 4:30 in the afternoon—and I was headed home along 75th Street through Naperville, just east of Fox Valley Mall, if you know where that is. Probably was fiddling with the radio because, you know, I worked in radio—when the car ahead of the car ahead of me stopped. And the car ahead of me stopped. And I stopped—but not quite soon enough.
My little Rabbit crashed into the big Buick LeSabre that was ahead of me.
The LeSabre suffered, maybe, like, a cracked taillight. The Volkswagen Rabbit crumpled up like an accordion.
Fortunately, no one was hurt. The young woman in the car ahead of me got out and—as I recall—said, not as I might have said, “What the hell? Weren’t you paying attention?” but “Oh, your poor car!”
Well, the Rabbit was functional enough to ease to the side of the road as we awaited the arrival of a police officer, who sat us in the back of his cruiser, allowing us to exchange insurance information and phone numbers—and who chose, to my good fortune, not to issue a ticket.
But it was clear nevertheless that, as the motorist whose car had rear-ended another, it was my fault and my insurance company and I would pay.
So the Rabbit limped home to Orland Park on what seemed like the worst day of my young adult life. The repairs weren’t gonna be cheap and the deductible wasn’t trivial for a recent college graduate.
But I thought to myself: “Hmm. She seemed nice.”
The next week mercifully was a vacation week for me. Unfortunately, the state of the Rabbit meant I wouldn’t be able to make a date I’d planned with a former girlfriend whom I’d hoped to reconnect with, and so that was off. But I thought to myself again about the other driver in my accident on what had seemed like the worst day of my young adult life: “Hmm. She seemed nice.”
So I called her to make sure that the insurance company was taking care of the damage, and—of course, it was just a polite thing to do—to offer to take her to lunch.
And once I was back at work with a functioning car, she accepted and we had a lovely lunch. And that was that, I thought. My duty was discharged. I’d made amends for my lousy driving on what had seemed like the worst day of my young adult life, and that was that. Also, she was four years younger than I was, so that was that.
But then she called me at work just to say hi. Because the radio station I worked at was playing at the mall clothing store where she worked—Best & Co.—and she wanted to know if I could get a song played: The Moody Blues, as I recall.
Well, as the news guy, I didn’t control the music and the Moody Blues were not in the main rotation at the station, but she seemed nice. So I walked down the hall and I begged the DJ to break format and play a Moody Blues song, and he did.
And that was that.
Then she called another time or two, for another song or two, and one day she called to say she was considering transferring to the University of Illinois and would I be willing to talk to her about the U. of I., and I said, thinking that she seemed nicer all the time, that I’d be happy to—in fact, I happened to have two press tickets to the Second City performance at Aurora’s Paramount Art Center that weekend so maybe we could go to dinner and a show and talk about the U. of I. along the way.
And she said yes.
I don’t remember talking much about the U. of I. that night, but whatever I said or did, she later told me, prompted her to tell a friend late that evening that … um …she was in love.
And it turns out she decided to attend DePaul University instead of the U. of I. And, to make a long and somewhat winding story short and a little straighter, almost five years after what seemed like the worst day of my young adult life, we got married.
And three sons, three grandsons and a granddaughter later—now, just a bit past our 46th crashiversary, as we call it—we remain happily married.
And she still seems nice.
And with some embarrassment but much joy, I would have to concede that none of it would’ve happened …
… if I had been a better driver.
